


Trust

by ValmureEld



Series: Venom Was a Good Film Fight Me [5]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Body Horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Sharing a Body, Trust, Trust Issues, Worry, mild body horror though it's not violent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 08:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16322495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValmureEld/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: Venom insists he's going to take care of Eddie. There will be no more eating Eddie, only eating the bad guys. Eddie thought he was way past mistrusting the symbiote, but little things still nag at him and he wrestles with his desire to be sure.Post movie so spoilers.





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueNeutrino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/gifts).



> This was a fic trade with the prompt of Eddie using a stethoscope on himself.

Eddie licked his lips, rubbing at his sternum and staring at the ceiling from his couch.

Why was he procrastinating on this? It wasn’t like waiting was going to untie the knots in his stomach or change his situation. And after all, he felt clear-headed again (for the most part) felt like he could breathe without hyperventilating (for the most part) and Venom was back and not growling quite so often about food (for the most part).

So what exactly was he afraid of finding out?

He licked his lips again, fingers tightening on the stethoscope that was laying rather uselessly on his chest. He hadn’t even made it to putting the buds in his ears yet.

Venom was asleep, or something, still recovering from almost being burnt to a tiny slimy crisp so his usual commentary on Eddie’s nerves was silent.

Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and sighed, trying to figure out why the thought of listening was scaring him so badly.

“Well, if you don’t want to do it, don’t,” he said reasonably, but without twitching to abort the situation. Words like _atrophied_ and _dying_ kept flitting through his head, and even though Venom had sworn up and down he wasn’t going to ever feed off of Eddie’s heart again, having the symbiote back was making him increasingly anxious. He couldn’t tell what were normal symptoms and what was a result of the alien chewing away again.

The worst part was, he felt _guilty_.

Guilty that he wasn’t trusting Venom after he’d almost died protecting him. Guilty that he was worried. Guilty that he was letting his anxiety ramp up all over again. Venom, logically, had no reason to lie to him. He’d healed his heart before they fell into the water in a very real moment of self sacrifice, and he’d promised not to harm him since. And Eddie had arguably never felt better in his entire life.

For goodness sake, the symbiote had not only fixed Eddie’s heart, he’d sealed up his entire chest cavity from nearly being split in half and poured life back into his body.

Using the stethoscope to check up on his own heartbeat felt like a betrayal….but _not_ using it had his imagination going wild and if he had to spend the rest of his life wondering if every fatigue streak was just a bad moment or congestive heart failure, well. They’d have a pretty short life.

_**...Eddie?** _

He squeezed his eyes shut, cursing internally. Venom sounded sleepy, so Eddie’s anxiety had no doubt woken him up.

_**We are anxious, what is wrong?** _

“Nothing, it’s...it’s nothing.”

Venom’s inky body bled onto Eddie’s chest and his eyes formed, peering up sleepily from around the stethoscope.

 _ **We are lying,**_ he accused, narrowing slightly.

Eddie sighed, turning his head away from Venom’s gaze. “Go back to sleep, alright? I said it’s nothing,” he said, shifting to sit up against the arm of the couch. Venom shifted with him, sitting up in his own way so he could look face to face.

_**We are Venom, you cannot lie to me. Your adrenaline is keeping me awake, your breathing is shallow and I don’t like it.** _

“Yeah, well, can’t help too much of that.”

_**You could talk to me, Eddie.** _

“Can’t talk about it when--”

_**When what?** _

“When it’s about you, okay?” he said at last, finally giving up on not looking the symbiote in the eye. Venom drew back slightly, his head cocking.

_**We are distressed….because of me?** _

Singular pronouns always sounded so forlorn and wrong in Venom’s vocabulary and hearing him use one just made Eddie feel worse. “No…” Eddie sighed, holding up the stethoscope. “I’m worried, alright? I know you said you weren’t going to feed on my heart anymore but what if you can’t help yourself? What...what if you missed something when Riot cut me in half or what if you start…..” he shrugs, feeling his heart pound with anxiety while his stomach churned around.

_**….You do not trust me to heal you.** _

Venom shrunk back, and Eddie took back his previous thought. That was the saddest the symbiote had ever sounded.

Eddie buried his head in his hands, leaving the stethoscope on the couch.

For a moment, it was oddly silent, aside from Eddie trying to get his breathing under control. It was starting to feel suspiciously more like crying, which was something he sometimes couldn’t help when he simply reached the top of blatant overwhelm.

He’d hoped after getting used to Venom those days were behind him. While they seemed to be less, clearly they weren’t over.

He could feel Venom shifting, but didn’t really pay attention until he felt the tips of the stethoscope being settled in his ears. He startled, looking up to see Venom letting go with his spider web-like tendrils, sinking back to rest on Eddie’s stomach.

For once, the symbiote was silent, letting Eddie make his own move. He couldn't help but think Venom still looked hurt. Feeling even more guilty, Eddie’s shoulders slumped and he picked up the chest piece, hesitating only a moment longer before resting it against his own breast.

He almost winced. The beat inside was fast and panicked, and he swallowed painfully and took in a long breath, trying to let it slow down. It occured to him that the entire endeavor was foolish--he didn't even know what he was listening for--but hearing his own heart pumping so loudly was already some kind of abstract reassurance.

He felt a prickle of unnerve go across his entire body when, behind the rapid heartbeat, there was a _squishing sound._

His eyes popped open and he stared at Venom, who was sunk a little lower on his stomach. Even though, intellectually, Eddie understood that Venom lived inside him in every way that could literally be interpreted, hearing it was an entirely different can of worms. Venom was rooted so deeply that his tendrils must have been clogging up most of the cushion space between his organs and Eddie had the absurd thought that, in order for Venom to fit at all, he must have just...eaten almost all of his visceral fat.

What a way to diet, maybe he didn’t have to think about all those tater-tots after all.

 ** _We are alive, and healthy,_** Venom insists, and the voice was even stranger through the stethoscope. _**Listen, Eddie.**_

For once, he just obeyed, swallowing compulsively and breathing strange with every distracting sound. It took a while to drown it out, but Venom seemed to get that he was in some ways preventing him hearing properly and for the most part, it went quiet.

Eventually, Eddie’s heartbeat began to realize there was no actual threat and as his adrenaline burned itself out he was left with a calmer pace. He dropped his head back in relief as the anxiety melted away, and for several long minutes he just lay there, stethoscope diaphragm trapped beneath his palm, his palm and chest rising and falling with each breath.

His own heartbeat managed to calm him, and as Venom promised, it was strong. It was healthy. Eddie could feel the echo of movement as the muscle inside made itself known through his ribs, and he finally felt the worry of the past weeks let go.

 _ **We are Venom**_ , the symbiote reminded, the sound echoing around the heartbeat. Deep inside and yet so close, Eddie heard Venom wrap around his heart with a methodical grace, but he didn't feel the dread or the discomfort he’d expected. Instead, he felt an overwhelm of peace. At worst he felt silly--of course Venom wouldn’t hurt him.

_**We will not harm you, Eddie. We will never harm you.** _

He felt a spear of warmth, like a hot drink on a bad day and he realized with a jolt and an intense fascination that Venom was moving _inside_ of his heart. He listened to the way the quality of the sound changed, and even though his adrenaline came back a little and his breathing grew heavier, nothing else happened. All his tensing up was for nothing. His vision didn’t fade, his thinking stayed clear. There wasn’t even any tingling in his limbs from a lack of real blood flow.

Venom was wound all the way into the chambers of his heart, and still it beat strong and regular under his scope. The sound was deep and rich and alive, and Eddie realized suddenly that Venom may very well have done more than restored his heart. He’d strengthened it. He was part of it. It wasn’t Eddie’s heart anymore, it was theirs.

It was only after that realization that Eddie made another--Venom moved with him. The sounds of his tendrils growing and receding around his body were in some kind of harmony with his heartbeat, with his breathing, even with the clenching sounds he could hear in his gut when he moved the stethoscope over closer to where Venom had been pooled.

He still had no idea whatsoever what he was listening for, but he could hear nothing that sounded sick or weak or

 _dying_.

Morbidly fascinated and still somewhat unnerved, Eddie slid the stethoscope back up over his ribs, tucking his hand just under his left breast. The steady _thud thud_ got louder there, and he felt a pulsing of viscous warmth as Venom bubbled up under his hand, effectively gumming his hand to his chest.

**_We will protect us, Eddie. We will not eat._ **

Eddie couldn’t help the slight quirk to his lips, though he didn’t try to move his hand or stop listening. “Yeah?” his own voice was especially strange through layers of symbiote and bone. “Why did you eat it in the first place?”

He cracked open one eye to see Venom’s expression, raising an eyebrow. The face that was looking at him from above his hand squinted, teeth bristling along in a displeased kind of expression.

_**We were dying and we panicked. We ate the nearest thing that we knew how to fix.** _

“So you went for my heart of all things? You do know I can’t live without that, right?”

 _ **We can help move your blood,**_ Venom defended _ **. We didn’t know the other organs yet.**_

“So you ate the thing you figured you knew how to fill in for. Nice. So what’s going to stop you again?” He was really just being facetious that time, he was no longer worried.

 _ **We promised**_! Venom insisted, mouth bristling in his petulance. ** _And we like how it sounds, and how it feels._**

Another surge of thick warmth bloomed up around Eddie’s heart and he got the mental image of a black flower closing around it. From the new, oddly muffled sound, the image was probably accurate.

“Alright well, just remember you said that the next time you get hungry,” Eddie said, slipping the stethoscope out of his ears as Venom took the hint and let his hand go. “And don’t squeeze it too hard you’re going to smother it.”

 _ **We won’t!**_ Venom said, looking all the more offended. Eddie actually felt bad then, and he chuckled, patting the blob like that would fix things. Venom submitted to the patting and looked mildly less offended.

“Alright, alright buddy. I trust you.” He sighed deeply and closed his eyes with a content smile. “I trust us.”

Venom made a pleased sound and he felt the grip close a little more snugly around his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok but just try to imagine sentient play goo webbing around your insides like....how on earth do you describe what that sounds like. Let alone what it would feel like.


End file.
